


three cheers for the renaissance man!

by celestialmechanics



Series: galleria dell'accademia di firenze / musée du lourve [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Hand Fixation, M/M, Pining, Pro Volleyball Player Sakusa Kiyoomi, Pro Volleyball Player Ushijima Wakatoshi, Sakusa Kiyoomi-centric, Sakusa pov, gay disaster ushijima, hand model!sakusa, i am once again pushing the sakusa shouyou BFF agenda, like just a little bit at the end, minor smut, years and years of silent yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27341323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialmechanics/pseuds/celestialmechanics
Summary: Sakusa Kiyoomi is 23 years old, and he still hates his smile: even with all of his grown-up teeth filling the soft vacancies in his fleshy gums, and even with all of the gaps closed—the muscles in his cheeks just never learned how to move in that direction.But here’s the thing: Ushijima Wakatoshi doesn’t smile very often, either; yet, his blank-faced stoicism does nothing to inhibit his utter beauty—and Kiyoomi is in a constant state of absolute awe of him.or: Kiyoomi can either sink, or he can swim. Somehow, he does both.or: "Thank you, Michelangelo!" Kiyoomi POV
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Sakusa Kiyoomi, Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sakusa Kiyoomi/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Series: galleria dell'accademia di firenze / musée du lourve [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996507
Comments: 9
Kudos: 130





	three cheers for the renaissance man!

**Author's Note:**

> my heart: hey you should really keep working on that slowburn atsukita :/  
> my brain: OR, you should write ur climate dynamics research paper???  
> my fingers: *fart noises* ushisaku soft *fart noises*
> 
> this is the second part to [thank you, michelangelo!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26996836) i highly recommend reading that first. u don't have to. but you probably should. for the sake of the story making... sense.
> 
> also: the name of the series is referencing the locations of the art pieces mentioned in both works!

Try as he might, Shouyou is not a perfect person. He’s aware of this: but he still tries his best to be kind, to be understanding, to be patient—but unfortunately, for the entirety of the human race, Sakusa Kiyoomi has demolished the possibility of an understanding and patient Shouyou ever existing in this plane of reality: “Omi-san, please. Get out of my car. Right now. I am begging you.”

With his eyes closed in what must be silent meditation, Kiyoomi takes a steadying breath and nods his head, as if he’s giving himself an internal pep-talk. “I am, I’m going to, just—,” he puts his hand on the door handle like he’s finally going to open it, and Shouyou’s seconds away from exhaling a sigh of relief—and Kiyoomi groans and releases the handle, slumping back into his seat. “I don’t think I can.”

Shouyou lets his forehead drop against the center of the steering wheel, and a loud and droning _honk_ blares from the car, causing a pedestrian passing by to jump in surprise at the sound of the horn.“Why. Why can’t you.”

Kiyoomi huffs and crosses his arms, acting as if _Shouyou_ is the one currently behaving like a petulant child. “I can’t explain it.”

Briefly, Shouyou wonders whether Atsumu would be upset if Shouyou pulled his hair out of his scalp in frustration: and since Atsumu would probably cry over Shouyou going bald, he decides against it. Instead, he elects to white-knuckle the steering wheel until he hears tendons clicking in the backs of his hands. “Ok. Ok, I _literally_ cannot help you if you can’t tell me what’s wrong,” Shouyou closes his eyes and asks any and all of the gods for assistance as he pleads with Kiyoomi, “and I want to help you, Omi-san. I want to help you _so badly_.” 

Kiyoomi sighs in exasperation, unable to decide between uncrossing and crossing his arms, and he mumbles something incoherent. Shouyou’s car engine sputters in anguish—he hasn’t removed the key from the ignition, hasn’t moved the vehicle from the parking space for nearly 90 minutes (and he’s been so good about his carbon footprint this year, too!) because Kiyoomi refuses to unbuckle his seatbelt and exit the car—“No! No; no mumbling. Tell _me_. Help me help you.”

“... I’m nervous.”

And Shouyou feels bad. Really, he does—and under other conditions, he might even be empathetic to the situation—however: “What is there to be nervous about? You’re Sakusa Kiyoomi! Professional volleyball player!” Kiyoomi still hasn’t looked at him. Shouyou’s success rate in the art of ‘touching-Kiyoomi-and-getting-away-with-it’ is maybe a little less than 50%, so his odds aren’t great: but if ever there was a time for risk-taking, it was now. He brings his hand to Kiyoomi’s shoulder and shakes it, forcing the older man to meet his eyes: “Sakusa Kiyoomi, who deals with Miya Atsumu every. single. day. Sakusa Kiyoomi, who once helped me write a _very_ vulgar text message in Italian,” he ignores Kiyoomi’s shudder and adds a second hand to his other shoulder, jostling him furiously, “Sakusa Kiyoomi, who somehow shares a bathroom with Bokuto Koutarou and has yet to commit capital murder: what is there in this world that could you possibly be scared of?”

And beneath the pressure of both his hands, the tension in Kiyoomi’s shoulders eases, and eases further, and finally, it releases. Shouyou can’t say with absolute certainty whether or not he’s smiling beneath his mask: but his eyes have lost that bit of tightness around their edges and have melted into something that could be called friendly affection. He then turns away from Shouyou and grips the handle to finally ( _finally—god,_ **_yes_** _, finally—)_ open the car door. He opens it and steps out, and before he shuts it, he turns back to look at Shouyou one last time: “I’m Sakusa fucking Kiyoomi.”

Shouyou whoops and bangs both of his hands against the dashboard, “Damn right, you are! Now get in there, rub some fucking moisturizer on your hands or whatever it is that you’re supposed to do, and smile pretty for the camera!”

Kiyoomi grimaces. “I don’t plan on smiling. Oh, also: I need you to pick me up in about an hour.” 

A warning light on Shouyou's dashboard flickers to life and informs him that his fuel levels are dangerously low: and though he may be impatient, he’s also forgiving. “Yeah, ok, sure, just _go_! You’re already incredibly late.” Kiyoomi rolls his eyes as he shuts the car door and walks towards the tall, imposing office building across the street. 

Shouyou arrives at the nearest gas station, and, because he’s a forgiving person, buys Kiyoomi a candy bar because he feels sort of guilty for all of the yelling that he did: and then he ends up only having enough money to fill an eighth of his fuel tank. He groans: but since he’s a forgiving person, he figures he can make it stretch.

* * *

After some brief revision and careful contemplation, Shouyou has confirmed that maybe he’s not truly all that forgiving; or perhaps he’s just sensitive to acts of betrayal. Kiyoomi rolls his eyes defensively, “I’d hardly call it a _betrayal._ That’s a tad bit dramatic.”

Shouyou slams his hands on the wooden dining table, which is currently the only barrier between the two of them: Kiyoomi doesn’t flinch, and instead, narrows his eyes further. Shouyou wouldn’t place bets on his chances of beating Kiyoomi in a fair fight, but he’s banking on the odds that Kiyoomi would be too apprehensive of throwing any punches in the first place (because despite the current guerilla warfare taking place, everyone knows that Kiyoomi has one (1) single soft spot and that it’s reserved for Hinata Shouyou). But Shouyou’s never been one for a clean and fair fight, anyways: “Let me see if I have this right: first, I _graciously_ drive you to your photoshoot; _then,_ I have to spend an hour and a half coaxing you to the brand deal that you _willingly_ agreed to, and _then_ I came back to pick you up and _brought you a goddamn snack_ , and now you have the **_opacity_ ** to deny letting me see—”

“It’s **_audacity_ **—” 

“—the prints from your photoshoot? _Seriously_?!”

A tendon flexes in Kiyoomi’s jaw, likely imperceptible to the naked eye: but Shouyou catches it, knows that an opportunity lies just around the corner, and stalks forward slowly. “It’s nothing personal, Shouyou; you know that,” Kiyoomi slowly moves around the table in an attempt to stay directly opposite of Shouyou, his eyes not once glancing away from the shorter man. “But you would show Atsumu, and he would show Bokuto, and Boukto would show everyone.”

Shouyou’s calf muscles ripple in anticipation. “Why would I show Atsumu?”

And finally, the opportunity presents itself because Kiyoomi can’t help but scoff at the implication that Shouyou wouldn’t show the prints to Atsumu. Shouyou knows that when Kiyoomi scoffs, he always rolls his eyes: and mere instant of distraction, that brief moment of inattention is all that it takes for Shouyou to pounce, leaping clear over the table in one fluid motion and tackling Kiyoomi to the ground. 

There is no epic battle, no nail-biter, no long and bitter fight: Kiyoomi resists as long as he can, but the second Shouyou manages to dig his fingers into the soft skin just beneath Kiyoomi’s rib cage, it’s all over. Kiyoomi chokes, going limp as his coordination becomes obsolete; Shouyou can pry the manilla folder containing the prints from Kiyoomi’s laugh-weakened fingers, and he races to the opposite side of the room to observe the photos. 

It’s too late, after that: Kiyoomi sits up and is prepared to reclaim the upper hand in this fight— but Shouyou has the folder open, and he’s smiling like an idiot, crooning, “Awww! Omi-san, you look so _handsome—”_ he looks up when he hears a door slam, and Kiyoomi is no longer in the kitchen, “—wait, don’t leave! Come back; we can still fix this!”

His pleading is of no use, but he doesn’t really mind as he flips through the handful of photos appreciatively. Shouyou was sincere when he said that Kiyoomi looks handsome in the pictures: his already luminous pale skin is striking against the photos’ charcoal backdrop, making him look even more imposing than he ordinarily is. He’s posed differently in each series of pictures, but the focus is always placed on his hands: each finger is positioned deliberately, begging the onlooker to analyze each digit, each knuckle, each tendon. 

Shouyou frowns, though, as he realizes that Kiyoomi isn’t shown smiling in any of the photos: each one features him with a severe look on his face. Shouyou guesses that the photographer may have instructed Kiyoomi not to smile since perhaps this ad campaign was aiming for a more somber and sophisticated look—but he remembers Kiyoomi finally exiting his car, turning back to face him, and frowning: _I don’t plan on smiling_.

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi is nine years old, and he loses both of his upper front teeth within two days.

And though he compulsively presses his tongue into the now-empty space in his gums; really, he doesn’t think much about it because he’s nine years old, and nine-year-olds lose teeth all of the time. His smile will look goofy for a few weeks, and then his grown-up teeth will come in, and he’ll have a grown-up smile to match. So instead of worrying about the faint, ominous whistling sound that occurs each time he breathes through his mouth, he goes to school the way he always does, and he smiles and laughs with his friends like usual. 

When he boisterously laughs at one of Motoya’s ridiculous jokes during lunchtime that day and catches some of his lunch companions snickering and whispering to one another out of the corner of his eye, he ignores the foreign feeling of stones piling high in his belly. Motoya says something else that makes their little group of friends giggle in delight—and across from him, the snickering classmate squints and tilts his head to one side, as though he’s engaging in deep contemplation: “Hey, Komori-kun, what would you say the opposite of a beaver is?”

Motoya abruptly stops laughing and looks to the boy in confusion. “Why would I know? I’m not a taxonomist.”

The boy meets Kiyoomi’s eyes and smiles maliciously— and although Kiyoomi is not a taxonomist either, he thinks he might know the answer— and he turns his eyes back towards Motoya, pointing gleefully at Kiyoomi: “Sakusa-kun!”

The other children at the table laugh and the stones in Kiyoomi’s stomach sink even deeper, and his cheeks feel oddly warm, even though he can’t have fallen ill with a fever. He wants to say something— anything— but is suddenly too afraid to open his mouth, and his throat feels dry as if he’s swallowed a cup of baking flour. It’s funny, he thinks, that the lowest hanging fruits and the shallowest barbs somehow cut the deepest.

Motoya, endlessly and tirelessly kind, pretends like he doesn’t get the joke: “Well, since humans and beavers are both mammals, I doubt Sakusa is a beaver’s exact opposite. I guess you’re not a taxonomist, either, are you?” The children laugh once again, this time at somebody else’s expense. Motoya tugs gently on Kiyoomi’s sleeve, giving him a reassuring smile when Kiyoomi turns to meet his gaze, and Kiyoomi smiles back without showing any teeth. 

Nearly a decade and a half later, an exasperated photographer asks Kiyoomi if he could smile in this particular photo: and he tries to make the corners of his lips turn upwards, tries to pull them away from his teeth to resemble something like a smile—because there are no longer gaps in his teeth, and he should know how to smile without feeling like his cheeks are made from cement—.

And when he receives a copy of the prints in the mail, later on, the photos where he’s ‘smiling’ are not included.

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi—age 23, native to Tokyo, the youngest member of his family, and an outside hitter for the MSBY Black Jackals—has tried his best to live a good and virtuous life. Yes, sometimes he has a short temper; and sure, maybe he occasionally takes advantage of Shouyou’s consistent offers to drive whenever they go places; and yes, okay, it’s true that he once convinced Bokuto that Atsumu lost his virginity while watching the baseball scene in the first _Twilight_ movie—but in the grand scheme of things, Kiyoomi is a good and virtuous person: and good and virtuous persons don’t deserve the shit that Kiyoomi seems to attract. 

“Guys! I see another one; add it to the tally!” Bokuto shouts from the front of the bus. Kiyoomi, despite his better judgment, looks up from his book just in time to see his face depicted on yet another billboard, this one just outside of a Hiroshima suburb, as the bus whizzes by it. He thinks he’d probably deface the billboard if he had a bottle of spray paint, because honestly, what kind of hand cream company buys a billboard advertisement, anyways? 

Atsumu rustles around in his duffel bag, his tongue poked out in concentration, and pulls out a cheap notebook and a glitter pen (as if Kiyoomi needs more reasons to be judgmental of him). He adds the billboard sighting to the ongoing tally and whistles, “Wow! That’s six entire Sakusa Sightings since leaving Osaka!”

Kiyoomi sighs and closes his book, conceding defeat. “Why are you keeping a tally, again?”

Bokuto whirls around in his seat to face Kiyoomi. “Because we have a celebrity on our team, and we should celebrate that fact!”

“Didn’t you do a shoot with Adidas last year?”

He waves his hands around carelessly, disregarding Kiyoomi’s claims. “Yeah, but that was different! My shoot was kinda goofy; your photos are like something an _actual_ model would do. You’re all serious and un-smiley, just like a real model!” 

He forces himself to unclench his jaw, to see Bokuto’s good intentions through the accidental reminder that Kiyoomi’s face doesn’t know how to work itself around a smile, doesn’t know how to remember that he’s all grown up now and has a mouth full of pearly whites: “Just like a real model,” he grits out. 

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi is 12 years old, and he thinks he might have re-learned how to smile when no one else is looking. 

As the bathroom door swings shut behind him, he catches sight of his own upturned mouth and rosy cheeks in the cheap and scratch-laden glass of the mirror—and is so surprised to see his reflection looking happy for once that the shock almost forces the smile from his face—but not quite. The sink fills with soap and water, and he tries his best to catch his breath, to slow his heartbeats.

He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to dry his clean hands. Once dry, he folds the handkerchief and places it back into his pocket, and wishes his heart would beat a little bit quieter. As he pushes open the bathroom door, he again tries to quell the tiny smile that graces his face, and this time, he succeeds. 

And as he steps back into the gym and his eyes are immediately drawn to those of Ushijima Wakatoshi—the smile finds its way back to his lips, and he decides to let it stay there this time. 

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a good person in this life. Still, he thinks maybe he really did do something fucked-up in a past life because he sees his own face everywhere he looks: he’s on billboards by interstates, or he’s plastered on storefront windows on every street corner, or he’s in the spreads of the magazines in the dentist office’s waiting room, or he’s on his own Instagram feed: and he’s always struggled with reflections, with photos, with second-grade self-portraits—but this is borderline absurd.

And when he scrolls through his Twitter timeline once more that evening, and yet another promoted post forces him to look into his own eyes: he deletes the application from his phone, turns the phone on, and throws it across the room. He stares at it from where he lays in his bed, glaring at its rectangular outline, and hates it, and hates it, and hates it. 

* * *

“Oh my god, Omi-omi, are you ok?”

Kiyoomi snaps out of his daze at Atsumu’s grating voice and feels his face pull into a scowl. “Why are you yelling?”

Atsumu dramatically brings a hand to his chest in relief: “Oh, thank God, your face went back to normal. I was getting worried; you’ve been, like, half-smiling since we got here.”

He feels his scowl deepen: he hadn’t realized he had been so obvious. “Maybe you should get your eyes checked, Miya. Now leave me alone; your boyfriend is over there terrorizing Kageyama-kun again.”

Atsumu gives him the finger as he scampers off to go stop Shouyou and Tobio from bullying one another, and Kiyoomi feels the glare on his face melt away. 

It’s true that he’s not very good at smiling, and hasn’t been for a very long time, that his default face is something akin to a grimace: but there were a few people he knew how to smile for. He would always find himself smiling while in the presence of his cousin; or when he’d remember something funny his mother had done when he was a child; or when Shouyou treated him like a friend and not just like a teammate; and he smiles when he sees Ushijima Wakatoshi—every single time, without fail. 

And he tries—really, _really_ tries—to keep the smile off of his face as he stands on the opposite side of the net, under the hot lights of a packed arena, and plays once again against Wakatoshi. He’d tried and failed to keep his lips downturned in middle school, at training camps, in high school matches, in that public restroom where he’d first seen him—he can feel himself failing even now, as Wakatoshi receives another brutal serve with a movement far too graceful for a volleyball court, but he can’t help it. 

And he can’t help it when the whistle blows after the Jackals score the final point: he walks to the net to shake hands with the other team, finds Wakatoshi’s sweat-slicked figure, and reaches out to shake his hand. Wakatoshi’s cheeks are flushed from exertion, and his hands are still a paradox of toughened skin and gentle touches—and Kiyoomi can’t help the way his breath is snatched from his lungs as he feels the skin of his hand brush against Wakatoshi’s; can’t help it when he squeezes that hand just a little too tight, a little too desperately. Wakatoshi inhales sharply, and Kiyoomi can’t help but snatch his hand away like he’s been burned, like he’s been caught out: Wakatoshi’s eyes widen, his cheeks redden—and he gives Kiyoomi an awkward bow before he turns on his heel and runs towards the Adlers’ locker room. 

Kiyoomi stands at the net for another moment, staring at his palm—and he’s no longer smiling. 

* * *

Here’s the thing: Ushijima Wakatoshi doesn’t smile very often, either; yet, his blank-faced stoicism does nothing to inhibit his utter beauty—and Kiyoomi is in a constant state of absolute awe of him. 

A set of fingers snap in front of his face, and he worries he might commit a felony if he spends much more time with Atsumu this evening. “Can you get your dumb fucking fingers out of my face?”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to put my ‘dumb fucking fingers’ near your stupid face if you’d pay attention to me when I’m talking to you! You’ve been distracted since we finished the game, and that was _hours_ ago. You’re _literally_ still not paying attention to me.”

And don’t quote him on this, but Atsumu is right: Kiyoomi is only pretending to be interested in his one-sided conversations with Atsumu and Shouyou this evening; in actuality, Kiyoomi’s focus has been reserved for one thing and one thing only, and that _thing_ is Wakatoshi, whose eyes have scarcely moved away from his plate of mostly untouched food; Wakatoshi, who looks like merely occupying the same room as Kiyoomi is causing him pain.

Here’s the thing: Ushijima Wakatoshi doesn’t smile very often, but that doesn’t mean that he’s unhappy, or that he’s unexpressive, or that he’s unfeeling—people always seem to think that Wakatoshi is robotic, that he’s incapable of basic human emotion. Kiyoomi believes that nothing could be further from the truth. 

Wakatoshi is like the Mona Lisa: the Mona Lisa, whose smile is small—or, according to some, perhaps nonexistent—and yet, it’s beautiful. Wakatoshi is like the Mona Lisa: because although the woman in the painting might not wear a smile upon her face, she still has this irrefutable hold over people, some sort of inherent magnetism that makes it impossible to look away. 

(Here’s the thing: Kiyoomi wishes he could look away—but he knows that he wouldn’t, even if he had a choice in the matter.)

Atsumu and Shouyou are still talking at him (he thinks they are, at least—it’s hard to tell when he’s not heard a single word they’ve said this entire night) when suddenly, Atsumu’s name is shouted over the noise of the restaurant. Atsumu turns around to find that the voice’s owner is Tobio, gesturing for Atsumu to join his table from across the restaurant. 

When Atsumu steps away, Kiyoomi feels a hand on his elbow. “Omi-san, is everything okay?” Shouyou asks, his face full of genuine concern. 

Kiyoomi turns to look at him: and without any warning, he spills his guts across the sticky tile floor: “I’ve liked Wakatoshi-kun for years, and I think I accidentally scared him off after our game this afternoon because I squeezed his hand.”

Shouyou’s eyes briefly widen in shock, and his mouth opens and closes as he searches for the right thing to say. Shouyou brings a hand to his chin as he thinks—and when he confidently opens his mouth, Kiyoomi believes he’s finally settled on some insightful words of wisdom—but his sage advice is abruptly interrupted as Atsumu returns to their corner far earlier than either of them anticipated. “Shou, Tobio-kun wants to talk to you.”

Shouyou and Kiyoomi both turn and find Tobio—Tobio, who is seated at a table with other members of the Adlers’ volleyball team. Tobio, who is sitting across from Wakatoshi. 

Kiyoomi whirls back around to face Shouyou, whose eyes have since adopted a mischievous glint. “Well, lucky for you, Omi-san, I might be able to help you.” He winks and skips across the room to Tobio’s table. 

He can barely hear Atsumu’s impatient _what’s he helping you with, Omi-omi?_ over the thunderous racket of his own pulse in his ears. Across the room, Shouyou ignores the words coming out of Tobio’s mouth and instead fishes his phone from his back pocket, turning to face Wakatoshi and settling into the empty seat beside him. There’s absolutely no way possible for Kiyoomi to hear the conversation happening between the two of them from where he stands in his corner of the restaurant—but as Shouyou presents the phone’s screen to a despondent Wakatoshi, he has a gut feeling that whatever is displayed on Shouyou’s phone screen can only end in catastrophe. 

Atsumu is still saying something, probably—but Kiyoomi is thinking of those interviews from people who survived disasters; the people who say that, in chaotic situations, everything happens in slow motion; the people who claim that they saw their entire lives flash before their eyes—and he thinks they’re all a bunch of liars: because his feet move across the room without his permission, without him even realizing it, his motions a complete blur. One moment, he’s standing with Atsumu in the corner of the room; and in the next moment, he’s standing over the table where Shouyou, Wakatoshi, Kourai, and Tobio are seated, and he’s just submerged Shouyou’s phone in Tobio’s glass of water. 

Four sets of eyes look at the glass full of phone and water; then, those same four sets of eyes turn to look at him. Kiyoomi feels his face ablaze with humiliation, or something similar. He clears his throat: “Sorry, Shouyou. I’ll buy you a new one tomorrow.”

Wakatoshi’s eyes reaffix themselves to the submerged phone, and Kiyoomi feels like he might cry. His stomach feels like a water balloon with a hole poked in its side—as though he’s being hollowed out, yet powerless to stop the water from escaping. There are so few people in the world that Kiyoomi finds himself smiling for, and one of them may be slipping from his grasp before his very eyes: and it occurs to him that for all these years—through all of the suppressed smiles, all of the rivalrous smirks, all of the companionable silences—he’s been a coward. And it occurs to him that he needs to say something—anything—to Wakatoshi if he wants to keep him as a friend. “Can I speak with you? Privately?”

Silence settles over the group as Wakatoshi’s eyes stay glued to the glass. Kiyoomi feels himself physically deflating when Shouyou digs an elbow into Wakatoshi’s side, forcing him to raise his eyes to meet Kiyoomi’s. Wakatoshi only gives him a barely-there nod and slides out of the booth. 

Shouyou gives Kiyoomi a discreet thumbs-up—Kiyoomi tries not to dry heave.

* * *

Sakusa Kiyoomi is 23 years old, and he still hates his smile: even with all of his grown-up teeth filling the soft vacancies in his fleshy gums, and even with all of the gaps closed—the muscles in his cheeks just never learned how to move in that direction. 

But here’s the thing: Sakusa Kiyoomi also knows that some people spend their entire lives chasing down reasons to smile, and Sakusa Kiyoomi is not a fool, and he’s certainly not willing to let his reason slip away without giving himself a fighting chance. He thinks of Shouyou’s hands on his shoulders, shaking him wildly until the doubt that clouds his mind has loosened: _You’re Sakusa Kiyoomi—what in this world could possibly frighten you?_

So he walks out into the frigid air outside of the restaurant, and he listens as Wakatoshi’s surprisingly gentle footsteps follow in his wake. He feels the hole in his water balloon stomach gape a little wider, feels the stream of water turn into a waterfall as his heart thuds against his rib cage. Kiyoomi is grateful that his mask covers most of his flushed face, and he’s glad that Wakatoshi can’t see the way he’s biting his lips anxiously. He takes a steadying breath, prepared for the catastrophic tsunami he’s sure will hit: but instead of emptying the years and years of fruitless yearning he’s kept sheltered in his hands, he says: “You played well tonight, Wakatoshi.”

Wakatoshi nods. “You as well, Kiyoomi-san.”

And for the first time, Kiyoomi understands how people manage to become frustrated with the eternally-static smirk on the Mona Lisa’s face: how can anyone possibly know what she’s thinking beneath that barely-there smile? Kiyoomi huffs a small laugh and surges ahead because he has no other choice: “I’m, uh—I’m sorry about Shouyou. I don’t really know what he was doing.”

Wakatoshi scuffs his heel across the sidewalk and looks down once again, saying, “I think he had planned on showing me some pictures.”

Kiyoomi hopes he can swing a miracle with Wakatoshi right now because god forbid Hinata Shouyou ever offers to be his wingman again, someday. “Yeah, he—I did a, um—photoshoot. For a brand deal. He thinks it’s cool, I guess, so he likes to show people.”

Silence stretches between the two. Kiyoomi thinks about tsunami-preparedness, all of the tips he’d learned in school through the years: that when the tide rushes out, it doesn’t stay out—it means the waters plan to rush back in with a vengeance. Wakatoshi forces himself to meet Kiyoomi’s eyes—Kiyoomi forces himself to sink or swim. “I’ve seen the photos before,” Wakastoshi says, unflinchingly.

Sink or swim. “You’ve seen them?”

Sink or swim, swim or sink: “I saw it in a magazine. I wanted to kiss your knuckles.”

And when the tsunami hits, it’s less like a catastrophe and more like a rapture, and Kiyoomi must have done something spectacular in this lifetime because he’s been chosen to go to up that golden stairway, is somehow dodging the bullet of Armegeddon: and Sakusa Kiyoomi is 23 years old, and he hates his smile—but he also hates the way Ushijima Wakatoshi is staring resolutely at the ground like he doesn’t know that the tsunami brings something beautiful, something divine. 

So he chooses to both sink and swim: he sinks his fingers into the hair at the nape of Wakatoshi’s neck and forces his gaze to meet his own, and he swims in pools of olive greens, lets himself go missing in the emerald quarries of Wakatoshi’s eyes. His mouth crashes into Wakatoshi’s lips, and he thinks that it doesn’t matter if the Mona Lisa is smiling or not because her lips are made of oil and smell like turpentine; her smile (if it exists) is trapped within a canvas prison: and Wakatoshi’s lips are made of flesh and blood and something that tastes like nectar, and his smile (which _definitely_ exists, no mystery, here!) is mingling with the skin and grown-up teeth of Kiyoomi’s smile: Kiyoomi only pulls away enough to mumble a whispered: “kiss me back.” And Wakatoshi obliges him, and obliges him, and obliges him. 

* * *

Inside the restaurant, Shouyou and Atsumu stand with their faces pressed against the glass window. Tobio and Kourai make jokes about how nosy the two of them are, all while asking for constant updates on what’s happening just outside the restaurant: and if Shouyou suddenly cheers loudly, exclaiming, “I always _knew_ I’d be a kickass wingman!” then at least none of them have to wonder why neither Wakatoshi nor Kiyoomi ever came back inside that night.

* * *

And don’t quote him on this: but it’s possible that, after a culmination of several beautiful events, Kiyoomi decides that perhaps he doesn’t hate the advertisement all that much. 

The early morning light filters in through the blinds in Wakatoshi’s bedroom, sprinkling the bed with a mosaic of sunspots. Kiyoomi straddles Wakatoshi’s lap and presses open-mouthed kisses into his neck, and leans into the bruising grip Wakatoshi places against his hips. The pace of the breaths begins to quicken, and Kiyoomi feels Wakatoshi becoming aroused beneath him—when suddenly, he catches a glimpse of a familiar magazine spread poking out from beneath the bed. It’s strange, he thinks, to be confronted with a photo of yourself while someone else gives you a bruising kiss on the skin of your chest. Kiyoomi clears his throat as he leans down to grab the magazine. “What’s this?”

Wakatoshi pulls his lips away from Kiyoomi’s nipple for a moment: “That’s your advertisement. Don’t you remember?” His lips return to Kiyoomi’s chest, and this time, his teeth make an appearance. 

“I know what it is— _shit_ —I meant why do you h-have it?” Kiyoomi tries not to grind his own hips down against the growing tent in Wakatoshi’s boxers. 

This time, Wakatoshi really pulls away and looks up at Kiyoomi with genuine concern. “Because it’s a photo of you. A really good photo, might I add. And as much as I like to look at it,” he brings one of those paradoxical hands, rough and gentle all at once, to Kiyoomi’s jaw, “I prefer to look at the real thing.” Kiyoomi rolls his eyes and then keens as Wakatoshi brings the other hand to palm his boxers, and gives in to the urge for friction, griding his arousal against Wakatoshi’s hand. And just as he starts to get into it, Wakatoshi says, “oh, wait,” and pulls away. He reaches into his bedside drawer, pulls out a marker, and hands it to Kiyoomi. “I would actually love it if you would autograph this for me.”

“Seriously?”

Wakatoshi leans forward and removes the marker’s cap with his teeth. “Seriously.”

(And if the signed photo somehow ends up taped to Wakatoshi’s wall—and if Kiyoomi somehow lets it stay taped to the wall for weeks, and months, and years, until eventually, Wakatoshi moves out of that apartment and into the one he purchased with Kiyoomi—then that’s no one’s business but their own.) 

**Author's Note:**

> to any of the homies who hate their smile: I promise u, it is beautiful 
> 
> ummm so I started this like? a couple of weeks ago and just finished it today so I feel like it's a little wonky ! as always, I DID Not beta read this!! i barely proofread the final product!!! so if you see a mistake, do not hesitate to let me know if u feel like it :)
> 
> as always, kudos and comments are like dopamine going directly 2 my brain and I love it when I receive them. thank u for reading!!!!!!!! i might post something again soon so I don't go berserk before the election!!!!! bye bye!!!!!!!!!!


End file.
